NAPOLEON (_continued_).
The return of Pitt to power, at the call of the nation; the aggressive
foreign policy of the first Consul, and the atrocious execution of the
Duc D’Enghien--a crime that may be palliated but not excused--soon led
to a new Coalition against France. Prussia, indeed, gorged with spoil
after the peace of Basle, stood apart, as she had done in 1799, as if
secretly ashamed of an ignoble part; but Russia and Austria joined
hands with England. Other petty States took the same side, and by the
summer of 1805 the Allies had come to a general agreement to take the
offensive. Before this time Napoleon had become Emperor, with the
universal acclaim of the French people, and the crowned soldier, who
had raised France from the depths of disaster to the head of Europe,
and whose strong hand had put anarchy down, now wielded the resources
of a mighty State, and made the revolutionary forces which he used and
hated the ministers of immense despotic power. The military strength
of France, though it was enlarged afterwards, was now really at its
extreme height, and Napoleon’s army of this period was by far the
finest he ever commanded. I must glance at the characteristics of this
magnificent force, justly known by the name of the Grand Army, and
infinitely the most formidable organization for war which hitherto
had been arrayed in Europe. Apart from small Italian and German
contingents, the Grand Army at this time was composed of Frenchmen, for
the most part troops in the flower of life, but with a large admixture
of veteran soldiers; and this vast body was inflamed with a strong
spirit of enthusiasm, of patriotism of its own kind, of thirst for
glory, and of intense confidence in an unrivalled leader. Its physical
and moral force was, therefore, enormous; and as five-sixths of it
had for many months been assembled in the great Camp of Boulogne--the
general name of many leaguers--and the troops had been inured to the
hard training of war, its military condition had attained perfection.
It probably numbered at this time about 200,000 men in the first line,
with reserves, perhaps, 200,000 more; and, regiment for regiment, I
certainly think it formed a more efficient instrument of war than the
huge national armies of recent days, composed far too largely of young
conscripts, and never yet subjected to the strain of ill-fortune.
The general organization of this great force was perfectly adapted,
in Napoleon’s hands, to the conditions of war in the first years of
this century. Brigades and divisions had now been formed into corps,
each under the command of able chiefs, too accustomed, indeed, to look
up to Napoleon, and not given sufficient freedom of action, but all
skilful and experienced soldiers; and the army had more cohesiveness
and real power than ever had been the case formerly. Napoleon, however,
apart from these masses, each an independent army in itself, had
large cavalry and artillery reserves; and he usually kept them under
his immediate control, to wield “his club of Hercules” for decisive
strokes. The Grand Army, too, like that of Louis XIV., had its _corps
d’élite_--the Imperial Guard--the tenth legion of the modern
Cæsar, and this superb force on many a hard-fought day turned by its
mighty preponderance the scales of fortune. As for the tactics of
the army, they had been perfected in the experience of a long series
of wars; columns of infantry, not as yet too dense, and preceded by
skirmishers, were formed for attack; but they were always supported by
cavalry and guns; and Napoleon invariably took special care that the
three arms should act in concert. These arrangements had given great
flexibility and yet strength to the improved formations; and it was
clearly apparent that the new methods were superior to those of the
Seven Years’ War. As for the mechanism of the army, if I may use the
word, the whole system of assuring supplies, of establishing magazines
and depôts, and of procuring continual relays of troops, which German
science has brought to perfection, had been largely matured by
Napoleon; and though he always “made war sustain war,” that is, he
usually trusted to resources on the spot in order to enable his troops
to move freely, he was most attentive to the wants of his soldiers, and
provided for them with great administrative skill. Yet, formidable as
it was, the Grand Army had marked defects which require notice. It had
never lost the habits of the Revolutionary Wars; Napoleon’s system,
indeed, promoted rapine; it retained some of the instincts of the
savage hordes let loose in 1793–94; it was crowded with ignorant and
bad officers, the survivors of the huge conventional levies; and the
arrangements of the staff were far from good. It still bore the marks
of a revolutionary age; and in all these respects it was very inferior
to the great army formed by Roon and Moltke.
The Allies had set their armies in motion by the first week of
September 1805. They had nearly half a million of men on foot; but,
partly owing to divided counsels, and partly to the disastrous mistake
of subordinating military to political ends, this gigantic force was
injudiciously arranged on the theatre. Four separate attacks had
been designed; the first by a small English and Swedish force from
Hanover and the North German seaboard; the second by an Austrian and
a great Russian army, to be assembled upon the banks of the Danube
and ultimately to invade Alsace; the third on northern Italy from the
Adige and the Tyrol, conducted by the Archdukes Charles and John;
and the fourth by an English and Russian contingent disembarked from
a fleet on the coast of Naples. But the first and last attacks were
mere weak diversions, which could not alarm a true strategist; as
regards the second, the Russian army, still in Galicia and Poland,
was at an immense distance from the Austrians upon the Upper Danube;
and as for the third, the ambition of the House of Hapsburg, eager
to regain its Italian possessions, had repeated the mistake of 1800,
its chiefs having placed far too great a force on secondary points,
without sufficient regard for those which were of supreme importance,
the space between the Middle Rhine and the Danube. Napoleon seized
the situation with the eye of genius; and the plan of his operations
was at once formed. Neglecting Northern Germany and Southern Italy,
and employing only an inferior force to hold the Austrian Princes in
check--they were in command of 100,000 men--he resolved to fall on the
Austrian army on the Danube, which, not more than 85,000 strong, was
thrown forward on the country round Ulm, to surround and destroy it,
under its chief Mack, as Mélas had been destroyed five years before,
and thus to cut it off completely from the distant Russian army, which
could not be on the spot at the time.
I can only glance at the operations that followed, less dazzling than
those which led to Marengo, but in principle and method essentially
the same, and a notable instance of the great maxim in war, set at
nought in 1793 to 1799, but always observed by real commanders, that
you should find and strike at the decisive point, and assail an enemy
where he is most vulnerable. The Grand Army marched across France from
the camp of Boulogne with a celerity which confounded its foes; two
corps, under Bernadotte and Marmont, created of late Imperial Marshals,
advanced from Hanover and the flats of Holland; a corp of Bavarians
joined the French; and the collected masses, nearly 200,000 strong,
were drawn together to the Rhine and the Main, ready to attain the
Danube, in the last days of September. These movements led to the great
surrender of Ulm, a most remarkable event in the wars of this century.
Masking the general movement by sending detachments of cavalry into
and along the Black Forest--the stratagem again of the column of Mont
Cenis--and spreading his masses over the Franconian plains, the Emperor
moved the converging arrays from the great arc of Strasburg, Mayence,
and Würtzburg; and by the second week of October they were upon the
Danube already interposed between Ulm and Vienna. The net was now
rapidly drawn round Mack, who, stricken with terror, remained almost
motionless, changing front about Ulm, and doing scarcely anything to
strike at the enemy gathering in on all sides. Some mistakes were made
in completing the toils, almost inevitable in manœuvres of the kind,
which a capable chief might have turned to account; but these were
rectified within a few hours; three bodies of Austrians made their
escape; but Mack simply waited on events, unlike Mélas, made no attempt
to break through, and capitulated with the mass of his army on the
19th of October. The greater part of the forces which had got off were
intercepted and made prisoners; and thus a whole army was literally
swept from the theatre by a march without striking one effective blow.
Europe never witnessed a scene of the kind again until Metz fell
through the treason of Bazaine.
[Illustration:
Sketch Map of
CENTRAL EUROPE]
Napoleon, in his rapid advance on Ulm, had spread his army over a
vast circumference because no possible foes were at hand; he had made
the best use of the good roads which now generally traversed France
and Germany; and he had thus turned to the greatest advantage one of
the new existing conditions of war. The front of the Allied attack
had been broken; and the paralysis, so to speak, of the head, had
caused the collapse of the inferior members. The eccentric operations
in the North of Germany and in Southern Italy came to nothing; the
Archduke Charles and the Archduke John--the first had been defeated at
Caldiero, a revenge for the failure of 1796--were compelled to fall
back from the Adige and the Tyrol; and the way from Ulm to Vienna
lay open. The Emperor, giving effect, in another age, to the great
conception of Villars in 1703, marched with the Grand Army down the
valley of the Danube, protecting his wings from possible attacks; the
Isar, the Inn, the Traun, and the Ens, lines capable of defence, were
passed and mastered; and, by the middle of November, the triumphant
conqueror had entered the capital of the German Cæsars. By this time
the advanced corps of the Russian army, which had marched from Galicia
and had attained the Inn, had rallied the fragments of Mack’s forces;
its chief, Kutusof, a name to become famous, had fallen back, and left
Vienna to its fate; and he had come into line with his colleague,
Buxhöwden, who had been marching from the Polish frontier, and had
made his way into the plains of Moravia. Napoleon broke up from Vienna
to pursue his foes, though, notwithstanding his wonderful success,
his position was already not free from danger. In the march on Ulm,
Bernadotte had crossed a Prussian district; this had incensed the King
and even the nation, for some time chafing at its neutral attitude, and
Prussia had begun to prepare for war, and to assemble troops on the
Elbe and the Oder. The Grand Army, too, had suffered heavy losses in
its forced marches into the heart of Austria; the system of living upon
conquered provinces had not sufficed for enormous bodies of men; and
thousands of stragglers, marauders, deserters, swarmed along the tracts
from the Rhine to the Danube. The Archdukes, too, in retreat from the
south, were straining every nerve to attain Moravia; and should Prussia
march an army through the Bohemian passes, and throw her sword into
the scale of the Allies, the French, isolated, would, with winter at
hand, and far from their base, be soon compelled to confront an immense
superiority of force.
Napoleon, however, always confident--the modern Cæsar had faith in his
fortunes--did not hesitate to march into Moravia; and he was at Brünn
by the third week of November, with a considerable part of the Grand
Army. At this moment Kutusof and Buxhöwden were near Olmütz about
80,000 strong; some Austrian contingents had united with them; Prussia
had actually promised to attack Napoleon; the Archdukes were but a few
marches off; and had the Allies only waited a fortnight, they could
have assembled nearly 200,000 men to fight a great battle with the
French Emperor, who could not have assembled 100,000. But folly and
presumption were in the Russian camp, and the young Czar, Alexander,
was persuaded to take the offensive, and to advance from Olmütz before
the available supports of the Allies were near. A theorist contributed
to this fatal resolve, and his pedantry led to a tremendous disaster.
Napoleon at this time was in position not far from Brünn, on the banks
of the Goldbach, in front of the little town of Austerlitz; and though
he had really about 70,000 men in hand, two of his corps were at some
distance. Weyrother, an Austrian general officer, proposed a grand
plan, to descend from Olmütz, to turn the right wing of the French
on the Goldbach, and to cut Napoleon off from retreat on Vienna, by
a formidable attack in the oblique order. The Allied army, perhaps
80,000 men, was close to the Goldbach on the 1st of December, its
columns arranged for the offensive movement ostentatiously talked of
and soon made apparent; and Weyrother announced a great coming victory.
Napoleon, who had drawn in his two corps, beheld with delight this
reckless strategy--a flank march along a wide front, under the beard
of the chief of Arcola and Rivoli; that “army is mine,” he proudly
said, and he made the prediction known in an address to his soldiers.
Anticipating what would happen--in part at least--he had assumed a
timid defensive attitude, in order to lure his enemies on--another
instance of his wonderful powers of stratagem.
The sun of Austerlitz rose on the 2nd, to illuminate one of the great
scenes of history. The nature of the ground forbade the manœuvre
contemplated by the Allied leaders. Towards their left, in the space in
which they proposed to outflank and defeat the French right, spread a
region of marsh, around the Goldbach, of wide lakes, and of intricate
country, with the hamlets of Sokolnitz and Telnitz hard by; and it
formed at once a difficult position to force, and a line favourable in
the extreme for defence. Their centre filled the plain round the hill
of Pratzen, and was, therefore, dangerously exposed to attack, should
it be weakened by a detachment to the left; and their right was almost
wholly “in the air,” and liable to be turned and destroyed by the low
hill of Santon. Napoleon had seized the characteristics of the scene
with the insight of the great chief of Ramillies, and his dispositions
were made to turn to the best advantage the local peculiarities which
he saw before him. He had already secured a second line of retreat,
was not bound to his base on Vienna, and was perfectly free to act
as he pleased; and his arrangements were the piece of a master of
tactics. He placed Davoust, one of the best of the marshals, with
only a few thousand men on his right--reinforcements, however, were
ready for them--for he wished to draw the enemy on to his ruin, and
the position he knew was easy of defence; but Soult, afterwards Duke
of Dalmatia, Bernadotte and his corps, with the Imperial Guard, were
massed together in formidable strength, to carry the plain and heights
of Pratzen; and Lannes, with the left and a reserve, held the hill of
Santon and the lowlands around, with every advantage for an effort
against the Allied right. The battle-field, therefore, was made, so to
speak, a theatre by the antagonist chiefs, to assure defeat and victory
alike; and Kutusof, it is said, foretold the issue with an assurance
equal to that of Napoleon.
These operations led to the great fight of Austerlitz, the masterpiece
of war, I think, of this century. By the early dawn, four big Austrian
and Russian masses were in motion to turn Napoleon’s right, advancing
slowly in the oblique order; but they toiled painfully through the
difficult ground; and they were kept at bay by the little force of
Davoust, which, holding Sokolnitz and Telnitz, defied their efforts.
Ere long a tremendous onslaught of war burst suddenly upon the Allied
centre, thinned by the divisions sent to the left; Napoleon, who, like
a crouching tiger, had reserved his strength until it was time to
spring, launched Soult and Bernadotte against Pratzen, and the enemy’s
centre was cut through spite of heroic efforts. Meanwhile Lannes had
assailed the enemy’s right; here, too, a noble resistance was made;
but science and skill, force being nearly equal, must always prevail
over the sternest courage; and victory soon declared for the French.
Early in the afternoon the Allied centre and right, half ruined, were
a dissolving mass; and though the left had forced Davoust back some
distance, it was isolated and entangled in an intricate region. It
was beginning to retreat, its cumbrous masses demoralised and showing
signs of panic, when Napoleon turned against it with that determined
energy which he nearly always displayed in a successful battle. His
victorious centre was brought to bear in irresistible power on the
flying enemy; a horrible scene of carnage followed; the Austrians and
Russians were slain or captured in thousands without an attempt at
resistance; and multitudes perished in the lakes near the Goldbach, the
French artillery shattering their frozen surface. The stricken army was
well-nigh destroyed; it lost all its guns; and nearly half its numbers,
and its fragments were scattered in every direction. The coalition
succumbed under this mighty stroke; Prussia said “Hail” to the
conqueror, and licked his hand; Alexander was too glad to escape beyond
the Niemen, with the remains of his army; and Austria, her constancy
at last broken, was compelled to accept the Peace of Pressburg, which
deprived her of all she had retained in Italy, and contracted the
limits of her shrunken empire. In the general dismay of Continental
Europe, England alone had consolation and hope; she had lost Nelson,
but that greatest of seamen had annihilated the fleets of France and
Spain on the ever memorable day of Trafalgar.
It is unnecessary to dwell on the first part of this campaign; for the
operations that led to the surrender of Mack were, I have said, akin to
those that hemmed in Mélas. The Allies were in a false position on the
theatre of war, as the Austrians were in 1800; Napoleon enveloped one
of their armies, as before Marengo he had closed round the Austrians.
The movements of 1805 were less fascinating, I have remarked, than
those of 1800; and the great superiority of Napoleon over Mack in
numbers make them less astonishing and strike the mind less; but they
were conducted upon a grander scale, were more scientific, and were
better prepared. The march on Vienna was a fine operation; but it will
always remain questionable if the Emperor ought to have hazarded the
advance into Moravia; assuredly had the Allies fallen back and waited,
he would have been exposed to the gravest perils.
The grand incident of the contest is, however, Austerlitz, a battle
that should be studied by every thinker on war. It is a poor account of
this mighty conflict to say that it represents the system of Frederick
at odds with that of Napoleon, and exploded by it; the result depends
on much deeper causes than tactical orders on a field of battle. No
doubt the Allies tried to attack in Frederick’s fashion; no doubt the
French attacked in columns with skirmishers; no doubt the hostile
armies may be compared “to a long bar of iron, inferior in strength
and suppleness to a chain of many links,” to use the metaphor of an
accomplished writer. But Austerlitz was not an affair of mere methods
of offence; it was the triumph of marvellous genius in war over
pedantry and ignorance of the higher parts of tactics. The Allies
placed themselves on the ground as badly as possible; they made a
long flank march under the guns of an enemy; their turning movement
inevitably failed in the region in which the attempt was made; and
had Daun been before them they would have been defeated, though Daun
could no more have achieved Austerlitz than he could have written
_Othello_ and _Hamlet_. On the other hand, Napoleon occupied
the ground with perfect judgment, made every feature in it conform
to his ends; placed his army upon it in the exact positions in which
its attack would be most decisive, and made the very most of the
false moves of his enemies. The result was complete; only two-thirds
of an army rather weaker than its foe in numbers, and much weaker in
guns, simply shattered to atoms a more powerful force, with a loss
comparatively very small; and this, though the Austrians and Russians
fought extremely well. In all this we see what Napoleon has called
the “divine side of war,” not its mere evolutions; the difference, he
has said, is that between a “book of the _Iliad_ and a page of
a grammar.” Yet masterpiece as this great battle was, I do not think
it surpasses Ramillies in the dispositions that were made before it,
and in the manner in which the enemy was reached and conquered. We see
the same insight in both instances; the same thorough perception of
the nature of the ground, and the means of taking the best advantage
of it; the same perfect appreciation of the faults of the enemy, the
same admirable distribution of the victorious armies. In one respect,
however, Marlborough perhaps was inferior to Napoleon in execution; he
did not strike down Villeroy with the tremendous force with which the
Emperor crushed the Allies, and did not show the same wonderful power
in victory. Yet I hesitate here, for we must remember Blenheim, and
the absolute destruction of Tallard’s army; and in comparing the two
battles, we must bear in mind that the three arms in Napoleon’s day had
acquired a “mobility” and a power in the field unknown in the first
part of the eighteenth century, and were, therefore, far more effective
against a defeated army.
I cannot notice the Confederation of the Rhine, the creation of vassal
kingdoms beyond France, as appendages to the House of Bonaparte, and
the enormous extension of the French Empire from the Zuider Zee to the
extreme verge of Italy. The dream of setting up again the throne of
Charlemagne in the generation of the French Revolution, and of holding
down martial States by sheer force of arms, is characteristic of the
extravagance sometimes seen in Napoleon; and it indicates also that
profound scorn of anything resembling popular rights and movements
which is a marked feature of his wonderful nature. War broke out soon
again on the Continent, and Prussia, unaided, challenged the French
Empire. That Power had been willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike;
she had feigned submission after the rout of Austerlitz, but she
remained angry and vexed at heart, and the domineering conduct of the
Imperial conqueror goaded her at last to proclaim hostilities. The
Court and even the nation rushed to arms; the misgivings expressed by
veterans of the Seven Years’ War, who had followed events from 1794 to
1805, were disregarded with false confidence; and two armies, about
150,000 strong, led by Prince Hohenlohe and the Duke of Brunswick,
marched from the Elbe and the Oder to the Thuringian Forest.
The operations of the campaign of 1806 are, perhaps, less marked by
Napoleon’s genius than that of more than one previous contest; but they
achieved success that even now seems marvellous, and they conspicuously
illustrate one of his peculiar gifts, power in annihilating a defeated
enemy. The Grand Army, about 180,000 strong, was on the Main, not
having returned to France when the Prussian chiefs had assumed the
offensive, and the Emperor joined it in the first week of October.
At this moment Hohenlohe and Brunswick were contemplating an advance
to the Rhine. Bold strategy, they boasted, was all that was needed
to overcome the Corsican upstart, and the Grand Army was spread from
Würtzburg to Bamberg capable of being easily moved on their flank.
Napoleon determined to gain this advantage, and, forming his army
into three great masses, he began to traverse the defiles that lead
from the southern verge of the forest towards the Saale and the
Elster. The movement, executed with his wonted promptitude, brought
the Grand Army into the plains between the two rivers on the 10th of
October, threatening the communications of the enemy with the Elbe; and
Hohenlohe and Brunswick, passing from boasting to terror, fell back
towards Weimar and Jena, to approach the Elbe. Napoleon, who, at the
beginning of the campaign, expressed unfeigned respect for the famous
army of Frederick, would not at first believe that generals of a great
school would make such a hasty retrograde movement; and he drew part
of his forces together, expecting to fight a great battle near Gera
and Auma, points in the valleys of the Saale and the Elster. This
miscalculation cost him the loss of some time, for his enemy had no
intention to stand, and, meanwhile, the retreating armies had fallen
back a considerable way towards the Elbe, the main body under Brunswick
making for the line of the Unstrutt, a feeder of the Saale, and the
defile of Kosen, a smaller force, led by Hohenlohe, halting near Jena
in order to call in outlying detachments, and then to follow Brunswick
to the Elbe. Napoleon began to pursue when he had ascertained his
mistake; he was greatly elated by the results of partial engagements
with small hostile bodies, in which the superiority of the French
tactics was manifest, and he wished to compel the Prussians to accept
battle. But his information was still imperfect; he would not credit
so rapid a flight; he believed that by far the greatest part of the
enemy’s army was concentrating near and around Jena; and his plan was
to overwhelm it in front, and to cut off its retreat. With this object
in view, he directed Davoust and Bernadotte to seize the defile of
Kosen, crossing the Saale at the points of Naumburg and Dornburg; and
with the main part of the Grand Army spread out in many columns he drew
near the river and advanced on Jena.
These operations led to Jena and Auerstadt, fought on the 14th of
October 1806. By the night of the 13th Napoleon had seized, had
occupied by an advanced guard, and had crowned with guns brought up
with infinite toil--the Emperor followed the train in person--the
Landgrafenberg heights, since known by his name, which commanded the
approaches to the plains beyond; and from this point he saw the army
of Hohenlohe, the bivouacs marked by miles of fires, extending along
the region between Jena and Weimar. He made his dispositions for a
great battle, still fixed in the belief that Hohenlohe’s army was
the principal part of the hostile forces; and as he knew that, in
any event, he would be in preponderating strength on the field, he
prepared to attack Hohenlohe in front, and to turn both his flanks,
and he directed Davoust to advance even beyond Kosen, to defeat, if
he could, the army of Brunswick, and to close on the rear of the two
Prussian armies. The battle of Jena began in the early morning; the
first movement of Napoleon was to debouche from the Landgrafenberg into
the plains beyond, and this was accomplished with little difficulty,
Hohenlohe having altogether failed to perceive the importance of this
position. When the French army had fully taken its ground, Napoleon
had 100,000 men against 60,000, and the issue of the battle could not
be doubtful. Ney, indeed, the ill-fated “bravest of the brave,” the
warrior of Elchingen and of the Moskwa, engaged his troops prematurely,
and met a severe repulse; and the Prussians displayed the stern
devotion, and even the precision and skill in manœuvre characteristic
of them in the Seven Years’ War. But Hohenlohe’s force, weaker as
it was, was divided; the attack of Lannes, the Guard and Murat in
front--the chief of the Imperial cavalry is well known to fame--that
of Soult and Augereau, another marshal, on either flank, became
impossible to resist; and though the Prussians “fought like tigers,” an
eye-witness has said, and Napoleon[11] sincerely praised them in his
account of the battle, Hohenlohe’s army was before long routed.
Meanwhile a battle of a very different kind had raged at Auerstadt, a
few miles off, on the line of the retreat of the defeated Prussians.
Davoust had issued, as he had been ordered, from the defile of Kosen;
but as he advanced he became aware of the great strength of the army
of Brunswick, and he entreated Bernadotte to come to his aid. That
chief, however, insisted on remaining at Dornburg, relying on the
letter of Napoleon’s despatches; and it is doubtful whether this unwise
resolve is to be attributed to the servile obedience characteristic
of the Imperial marshals, or to miserable jealousy and dislike of a
colleague. Davoust was now left with about 27,000 men to confront
Brunswick, who must have had 70,000 had his force been well in hand;
and the Marshal directed one of the finest battles of the whole period
of the wars of Napoleon. He tenaciously kept Brunswick at bay for
hours, but he must have been overwhelmed had Brunswick displayed the
energy of the Austrian chief at Marengo; and in that event the two
Prussian armies would have successfully effected their retreat to the
Elbe. Brunswick, however, and most of the Prussian leaders, fell, and
in a fatal hour the wretched advice was given to retire, and seek the
support of Hohenlohe’s army, known to be making a stand at Jena. Within
two or three hours the wrecks of that perishing force became entangled
with the troops of Auerstadt; the contagion of demoralisation and
panic spread, and the two armies broke up in headlong flight, ravaged
and never let to rest by the French cavalry. Once more Napoleon gave
proof of his skill in pursuit, and on this occasion with extraordinary
results. The Prussian army had no reserves; the beaten force was
completely scattered, and made for the course of the Lower Elbe, and
the French Emperor, seizing the chord of the arc, forced it, in masses
of shattered fragments, northwards, and cut off five-sixths of it from
all possible retreat. Within a few days the conqueror had entered
Berlin; some 20,000 fugitives were the sole relics of a fine army of
150,000 men; these were driven into the wastes of the Lower Vistula,
and the military power of Prussia was destroyed. Terrible scenes of
weakness and despair followed; great fortresses opened their gates to
hussars, and the monarchy of the chief of Leuthen toppled down in ruin.
One of the last divisions that surrendered was that of Blücher, a rude
soldier brought up in the school of Frederick, and destined to win a
name in history.
The campaign of Jena, it has been remarked, bears a singular
resemblance to that of 1870, in which, however, victory passed from
Gaul to Teuton. In both instances there was the same arrogance and
precipitate haste on the defeated side; in both the same hesitation
followed by panic; in both the same superiority of force, generalship,
of all, in short, that secures success in war on the side of the
triumphant conquerors; in both the same utter collapse of a great
military State. Prussia, however, unlike France, made no national
effort to struggle out from under the heel of the victor. There was no
siege of Berlin like that of Paris; no Prussian Chanzy made his powers
manifest; no Prussian Gambetta refused to despair of his country, or
organized a resistance, misdirected no doubt, but not the less heroic
and even formidable. In this campaign, I have said, the strategic gifts
of the Emperor are not so strikingly seen as in others which I have
tried to sketch. The plan of debouching into the valleys of the Saale
and the Elster from the edge of the forest, though certainly the best,
would have probably occurred to a general of the second rank; and,
as a matter of fact, it occurred to Jomini, then a young officer in
the Imperial Service. In the operations, moreover, that led to Jena,
Napoleon made more than one real mistake; he lost time in preparing to
fight near Gera and Auma. He was convinced that he was dealing with the
main Prussian army at Jena. He ordered Davoust to advance beyond the
pass of Kosen, and to close on the enemy, upon the false assumption
that the force of Brunswick was not very great; and owing to these
misconceptions, he so placed his army on the scene of the two battles
that Davoust escaped a complete defeat by a chance only--a result that
would have caused the failure of the campaign. Most probably Bernadotte
was to blame for not joining his brother Marshal, and averting a
blow that might have been disastrous; but Napoleon’s orders to go to
Dornburg seem clear, and, in any case, as General-in-Chief, he is
mainly accountable for a decided error. Yet the true student of war
will not think the less of the Emperor for mistakes such as these. The
greatest commanders must make mistakes, for they must act at once on
imperfect knowledge; and the aphorism of Turenne is the simple truth,
“He is the best general whose mistakes are the fewest.”[12] For the
rest, in the campaign of 1806, Napoleon’s general conceptions were, as
always, masterly. It is not surprising that he could not believe in
the precipitate flight of a most renowned army; and his arrangements
in the actual contest at Jena were those of a captain of the highest
order; though he was so superior in force, they have little interest.
What is to be chiefly dwelt on in this campaign is its illustration
of the wonderful powers of Napoleon in destroying a retreating enemy.
Many a chief would have followed the Prussians to the Elbe; the
Emperor completely cut off their retreat, forced them into nooks and
corners where they could not escape, and compelled the great body of
them to lay down their arms. Napier was, perhaps, thinking of this
great achievement when he compares Napoleon’s battle to the “wave that
effaces the landscape.”
Napoleon, after the subjugation of Prussia, came into conflict with a
more distant enemy. Alexander, the future head of the Holy Alliance,
half French in ideas, but at heart a despot, had undertaken again to
defend Old Europe; and notwithstanding the experience of Austerlitz,
had solemnly vowed to avenge Prussia. His armies, however, moving
slowly through the immense spaces of the Russian Empire, were unable
to avert the ruin of Jena, or to prevent the fall of the Prussian
Monarchy; it was November before they reached the Niemen, and they had
not approached the Vistula for some time afterwards. The conqueror,
who, in the intoxication of success, had launched against England
the well-known Decree which declared her excluded from commerce with
Europe, and established the famous Continental system, resolved to
march against the new foe, and to strike down the Russians in the
wilds of Poland. He made preparations, in Berlin, for a great winter
campaign; and, looking behind and before, he left nothing undone to
gain opinion in France, to make his military power irresistible on the
theatre of war, and to secure a fresh base for an offensive movement.
His arrangements were far-sighted and masterly; for there is no wilder
mistake than to suppose that Napoleon, though his imagination at times
overcame his judgment, was not always the most profound and capable, as
well as the boldest, of strategists. Magnificent public works enchanted
Paris; rewards were lavished upon the Grand Army; and France, ever
liable to be carried away by “glory,” was, so to speak, entranced in
dreams of Imperial grandeur. Meanwhile thousands of levies were called
to join the eagles; the fatal system of anticipating the conscription
began; vast bodies of troops were sent from the Confederation of the
Rhine, from Italy, from Holland, and even from Spain; and these were
stationed at intervals along the space extending from the Rhine to the
Elbe and the Oder. Nor did the Emperor omit precautions to provide for
these immense masses; the granaries of Germany were made to furnish
supplies; the French cavalry were remounted in regiments from the
establishments of the troopers of Seidlitz; and enormous magazines were
prepared to support the hosts of Western Europe, in their march to the
East. Napoleon, too, cast a scrutinizing eye on possible enemies and
possible allies; he arrayed an army in Italy to observe Austria; and he
tried to cajole the Sultan into attacking the Czar.
Towards the close of November, the Grand Army, extending from the Meuse
and the Rhine to beyond the Oder, had reached the great strength of
300,000 men; and Napoleon expected a speedy triumph. Yet that vast host
was already different from the soldiers of Austerlitz and of Boulogne,
it was a “_colluvies gentium_,” in the historian’s words; it was
crowded with young levies and half false auxiliaries; and the wand of
the magician, so to speak, had changed in his hands. As yet, however,
these elements of decline were not perceptible to any large extent; the
warriors of Jena formed the first line; and the front of the Grand Army
was moved to the Vistula, strong detachments being made to protect its
flanks, and to subdue the fortresses Prussia still held in Silesia.
Napoleon had reached Posen by the end of November; his troops had soon
covered the plains of Poland; and when he attained the scenes of the
famous Partition, the Poles greeted him as the coming liberator of
their race. The Emperor, however, true to a nature to which popular
stirrings were simply abhorrent, put off his suppliants with fair
speeches; he enrolled the Poles in his ranks by thousands; but he never
sought to make them an independent people. Irresistible in strength,
as he believed himself to be, he had no wish to exasperate Austria,
one of the partners in the destruction of Poland; and hard statecraft
concurred with instinct in causing him to adopt a purely selfish
policy. As yet, however, all went well; the Grand Army, probably
130,000 strong, held the line of the Vistula, and filled the tract
between Thorn and Warsaw by the second week of December; the remains of
the Prussian forces, and two Russian armies which had approached the
river fell back at all points; and the formidable barrier of the great
stream of Poland, held on both banks, was completely mastered.
The position of the enemy on the theatre of war now invited one
of Napoleon’s strokes. The hostile armies were widely apart, and
disseminated upon a vast semi-circle; Lestocq, with the relics of Jena,
about 20,000 strong, holding a line from Soldau to the Lower Vistula;
Beningsen, a Russian chief, with perhaps 50,000 men, being in the angle
where the Narew and the Wkra meet before they merge in the Vistula’s
waters; Buxhöwden, with probably 40,000, being far in the rear around
Ostrolenka, in the country about the Upper Narew. The Grand Army,
between Thorn and Warsaw, was in possession, therefore, of all the
shorter lines on the field of manœuvre against its foes; and Bernadotte
and Ney, on the left, were directed to attack and overwhelm Lestocq,
while the corps of Augereau, of Lannes, of Davoust, and the Guard,
with Soult in the rear, were to fall on Beningsen, to cut him off from
Buxhöwden, and to drive the two armies into the deserts between the
Bug and the Narew. The project was worthy of its renowned author; and
the Grand Army began the movement from the Vistula in the last days of
December. Napoleon, however, for the first time, found the forces of
Nature and the state of the theatre arrayed against his rapid offensive
strategy; and his conception was not even nearly realised. The region
traversed was one of morasses and woods; there were scarcely any
supplies to be found on the spot; the French soldiery, living on
magazines from the rear, and sinking in expanses of swamp, were hardly
able to march; and the cavalry could not ascertain the movements
of the enemy behind whole leagues of forest. Comparative failure
was the result; the allied armies effected their retreat; Lestocq
eluded Ney and Bernadotte; Beningsen, who had encountered Lannes at
Pultusk, and Davoust at Golymin, without a defeat--the corps of the
Marshals had been misdirected, for it was impossible to reconnoitre
the country--contrived to join Buxhöwden, though with great loss; and
the converging armies found rest for some days on the vast and lonely
plains of Eastern Poland. Napoleon, baffled, returned to the Vistula
and placed the Grand Army in winter quarters extending from Warsaw
almost to the coast; and his forces were spread on an immense line,
for it was difficult in the extreme to find supplies, and there was no
apprehension of possible danger.
Beningsen, however--he had been placed in supreme command--elated at
what he deemed success, resolved to assume a bold offensive; he defiled
between the long screen of forest and lakes, which divides the Narew
from the Passarge; and he all but reached the corps of Bernadotte and
Ney, a nearly isolated wing of the hostile army. Napoleon prepared a
decisive counter-stroke; he ordered Bernadotte and Ney to fall back,
with the view of luring the enemy on; and he directed the other corps
of the Grand Army to close on the rear of the Russian chief, when
fully committed to the forward movement. It was a design worthy of the
chief of Austerlitz; but Beningsen found it out through an intercepted
despatch, and he instantly fell back from the Passarge to the Alle,
in the hope of escaping his terrible enemy. Napoleon pursued with his
accustomed energy; the vast plains, hardened by the frosts of the
North, enabled his troops to move more rapidly; and he came up with
his adversary, in position, round Eylau, where Beningsen, urged by
his army, had consented to stand. The battle was fought on the 8th of
February 1807; it was one of the most sanguinary of the wars of that
age, and in the result it was a mere Pyrrhic victory. Each army was
about 80,000 strong; but the Russians had many more guns; and this told
heavily on the lines of the French, for Napoleon delayed his attack for
some hours in order to allow his supports to come up. It is unnecessary
to retrace the scenes of a conflict unmarked by peculiar tactical skill
and notable chiefly for the stubborn constancy shown by the Muscovite
soldier on many a field. The centre of the French, attacked in a
tempest of snow, was shattered, and well nigh pierced through: a charge
of Murat, and all his horsemen failed against the tenacious Russian
infantry; the arrival on the scene of Davoust and Lestocq made the
issue at several moments doubtful; but the scale was ultimately turned
by Ney, who had hastened to the spot, by a forced march. The Russians,
scarcely defeated, only just fell back; and Napoleon had suffered too
much to move.
The carnage of Eylau on both sides was terrible; the corps of Augereau
was nearly destroyed; and the Russians, packed in dense masses, had
suffered frightfully from the continuous fire of the French artillery.
But of the two conflicting hosts, the Grand Army was certainly the one
most exposed to peril; the Russians were almost on their own ground;
it was far from its base, with Germany in its rear, and its position
for a time became extremely critical. Napoleon’s triumphs, in fact,
had been so unbroken, that he was deemed vanquished even in a drawn
battle; a thrill of alarm and anxiety ran through France, and the
humbled Continent was stirred to its depths. Had Beningsen possessed
the gifts of Frederick, he would, at this juncture, have resumed the
offensive; in that event, Napoleon must have retreated to the Vistula,
at least, perhaps to the Oder; Austria, in all probability, would have
taken the field; and the great Teutonic rising of 1813 might have been
witnessed in 1807. But the Russian chief, though a capable man, was
not a commander of the foremost rank; he had suffered immense loss,
and he retired behind the Alle in order to place his army in winter
quarters, confessing defeat by this retrograde movement. Indomitable
constancy, we shall see hereafter, was not one of Napoleon’s
distinctive qualities, but he perfectly knew what a prodigious effect
an imposing attitude has on mankind, and would necessarily have in
the present state of Europe; and his conduct was that of a consummate
warrior. In order to convince a doubting world that Eylau had been
a French victory, he moved his army forward a little distance, and
instead of falling back on the line of the Vistula, he ostentatiously
placed every corps at hand in cantonments behind the course of the
Passarge, braving a northern winter on the very verge of Russia.
Meanwhile, he applied himself, with that amazing energy, that mastery
of detail, that administrative power, for which he has perhaps had no
equal, to reinforce and secure the Grand Army; to establish it firmly
in its present position; and to make his military ascendency supreme.
Two fresh levies of conscripts were made; his vassal kings, and still
submissive Allies, were compelled to furnish more contingents to the
theatre of war, and to comply with enormous demands for supplies; the
forces required to hold Austria in check and to keep Prussia down
were largely increased; Masséna was summoned with his corps from
Italy to strengthen the front of the Grand Army; and Mortier, Duke
of Treviso, another marshal, was sent with a considerable detachment
to the Pomeranian seaboard, in order to guard against a descent from
Stralsund on the communications and flank of the Imperial hosts
expected to be made by a British force. Concurrently, a corps under
Marshal Lefebvre was moved to undertake the siege of Danzig, a place of
capital importance still held by Prussia; the sieges of the Silesian
strongholds were pressed, and an alliance at last was made with the
Sultan, who even proclaimed war against the Russian Empire. Months were
spent in making their last preparations, at Osterode, near the banks of
the Passarge; and Napoleon’s correspondence alone can give the student
of war an adequate notion of the prodigious ability of their great
author.
The Emperor’s exertions were completely successful; the Nemesis of
conquest had not yet drawn near; and by the spring of 1807 his military
power was established on broader foundations than ever; and he was
ready to take the field with most imposing forces. By this time Eylau
was a mere recollection; the Continent had relapsed into bondage; and
the Imperial armies, filled with bad elements as they were, reached
the enormous number of half a million of men, spread from Champagne
to the limits of Eastern Prussia. Meanwhile, no attack had been made
from Stralsund; Danzig had fallen with the Silesian fortresses; the
Porte had compelled Duckworth to leave the Dardanelles; the Turk was
in arms against the Czar; and the cause of old Europe seemed once
more desperate. With both his flanks covered, and his base secure,
Napoleon had 160,000 men in perfect order upon the Passarge, ready to
take the offensive at the first moment when the growth of vegetation
would supply the means of subsistence to his thousands of horses. Yet
such is the waste and strain of war that, even at this time, 60,000
men were missing from the rolls of the Grand Army, and spread along
its rear, living on plunder and straggling; and this, notwithstanding
the astonishing efforts of Napoleon throughout the whole winter. In
fact, railways being as yet unknown, the means of transport were still
imperfect, and the admirable arrangements by which the German armies
of the present day are moved and supplied were impossible, especially
along an enormous line.
The success of the Czar in reinforcing his armies had been trifling
compared with that of Napoleon; and England, as we have seen, had made
no diversion. The Russian Guards were despatched from St. Petersburg,
and troops were in march from other parts of the Empire; but Beningsen,
in the last days of May, had scarcely more than 120,000 men to oppose
to the Grand Army of 160,000; and this though the Russians were close
to their frontier, and the Emperor was hundreds of miles from the
Rhine. In these circumstances, the Russian chief ought to have stood
cautiously on the defensive; but he endeavoured to repeat the attempt
of the winter; and breaking up from his camps on the 5th of June, he
fell on Ney, somewhat widely detached, and on the extreme left of the
Grand Army. Ney, however, a tactician of real skill, held the enemy
in check, and slowly fell back; Napoleon tried a counter-attack once
more; and he marched against Beningsen, from the Passarge, in the hope
of gathering on his flank and rear. The Russian contrived to effect
his escape; a great entrenched camp which, after the fashion of Daun,
he had fortified, arrested the onset of the French; and he reached
the Alle and began to retreat along the right or eastern bank of the
river, in the hope, apparently, of reaching Königsberg, where immense
supplies had been stored for his army. The Emperor followed along the
western bank, his object, too, being to attain Königsberg; and his
foremost corps came abreast of the Russians, the rest of the Grand Army
being somewhat divided, and a considerable part being in the rear.
This state of affairs encouraged Beningsen, in an evil hour, to try to
attack his enemy. On the 14th of June 1807, he began to cross to the
left bank of the Alle, at daybreak, with more than half his army; and
by mid-day he had assailed the corps of Lannes, for the moment isolated
and in advance. The French marshal, however, made a determined stand;
in a short time Mortier, the Guard, the chief part of the cavalry, and
Napoleon, had arrived on the scene, and the corps of Bernadotte and Ney
soon made their appearance.
Napoleon seized the position of affairs at a glance, and made
everything ready to destroy an enemy who had recklessly offered battle
with a great stream in his rear. With complete mastery of the grander
part of tactics, he commanded Lannes and Mortier to fall back, in order
to draw Beningsen some distance forward; and Ney and Victor, another
marshal, in temporary command of Bernadotte’s troops, were directed to
seize the bridges thrown across the river not far from the little town
of Friedland by Beningsen, and to cut off his retreat. This admirable
stroke completely succeeded; and apart from the fact that Napoleon’s
forces were by this time greatly superior in numbers, the defeat of the
Russians had been rendered certain. Beningsen fell imprudently into the
snare; Lannes and Mortier seemed to yield to the Russian masses; and
when these had advanced too far to escape, Ney, covering his attack
with a tremendous fire, and his colleague made the decisive movement.
The bridges were taken and destroyed after a stout resistance; and the
Russians were forced back against a deep river, hemmed in, captured,
and drowned in multitudes. A fragment only of the army got across the
Alle; and Beningsen fled to the line of the Niemen, followed by his
indefatigable and pitiless foe. The Grand Army halted on the Muscovite
frontier; the Czar had no choice but to seek an armistice; and the
French eagles which had flown from the Channel, overshadowing Germany
in their ravening flight, closed their Imperial wings on the edge of
Old Europe. Troops of Tartars and Kalmucks armed with bows and arrows,
and scattered along the banks of the Niemen, in the vain hope of
arresting Fate, attested the exhaustion of the Russian Empire.
The twofold campaign of Eylau and Friedland does not exhibit in its
highest aspects Napoleon’s marvellous genius in the field. His project
of attacking the Allied armies on the Wkra and Narew, at the close
of 1806, undoubtedly was worthy of a great strategist; and his plan
of falling back to draw Beningsen, and of doubling on him when he
marched from the Passarge, reveals once more his pre-eminent gift of
stratagem. The stroke delivered at Friedland, decisive and splendid,
was that, too, of a master of tactics in their highest sense; the
vulnerable side of the enemy was at once detected; and his position
on the battle-field was made to cause his ruin. Still, the strategy
of the Emperor in this contest comparatively failed in more than one
instance; the extension of his cantonments--this was due, I repeat to
the extreme difficulty of supporting his army--exposed him to attacks
of a formidable kind; and he barely escaped defeat at Eylau. The most
conspicuous proof this campaign affords of his military capacity is
his steadfast attitude amidst a host of enemies, when beyond the
Vistula, and his administrative triumph in restoring his army; these
are examples of powers of different kinds, but alike indicate supreme
ability. The chief lesson of this campaign, however, is that even
Napoleon’s wonderful gifts could not overcome impassable obstacles;
his grand offensive strategy hardly succeeded, because the conditions
forbade success; his brilliant manœuvres missed their mark, because his
troops could not live in Poland as they had lived in the fertile plains
of Italy, and could not move rapidly in wastes of swamp; the Phaeton
of war found himself opposed by the forces of Nature and well nigh
succumbed.
The end, nevertheless, was as yet distant; and Fortune raised her
favourite to a still more dazzling eminence. Napoleon had felt, during
recent events, that prodigious as his military power was, he was
isolated in a hostile or unfaithful Europe, and he resolved to turn
to account his recent victory by endeavouring to make his humbled
adversary a permanent ally of the French Empire. To attain this end
he had two great advantages, the ascendency of astonishing success,
and a power of subjugating men which seemed like magic; and Alexander,
indeed, wounded to the quick by the conduct of England in the affair
of Stralsund, was ready to yield to England’s deadly enemy. In the
presence of their armies on either bank, the two Sovereigns met on
a raft on the Niemen; the town of Tilsit was chosen as the seat of
the conferences which immediately followed; and the fascinations of
Napoleon had soon won over the young Czar to alliance, and even to
friendship. All that passed in these interviews is still unknown,
but the Revolutionary Monarch and the half Oriental despot agreed to
re-model the map of Europe, and formed plans of the most far-reaching
ambition. Each declared England the common enemy; and Alexander
consented, at Napoleon’s instance, to adopt the Imperial Continental
system, to close the ports of Russia to British commerce, to summon
England to make peace at once, and, should she refuse, to array against
her the navies of every state in Europe, invited or compelled to obey
the mandate. Meanwhile, Sweden was to be despoiled of Finland; the
never-changing ambition of the Czars was to be gratified by great
Turkish provinces; Constantinople was talked of as a prey; and a
Russian advance to the Indus, it is believed, was discussed. In return
for these immense concessions to a defeated enemy, Napoleon obtained
the recognition of the French Empire, and of the order of things he
had set up in Europe; the Czar pledged himself to make common cause
with his ally in his contest with England; and Alexander perhaps agreed
to the conquest of Spain. To complete the new arrangement of the
European world, in the interest of the Lords of the West and the East,
Prussia was to lose nearly half her territory, and to be reduced to a
second-rate power. Napoleon announced that he would have gone farther
but for his regard for his Imperial friend. Saxony was to be made a
counterpoise to her old rival in Germany, as a mere French dependency;
and the craving of the Poles for national life was to be appeased by
the mock creation of a Grand Duchy of Warsaw for the House of Saxony.
I cannot dwell on the policy of Tilsit, unequivocally condemned by all
writers. It was a conspicuous instance of the extravagance sometimes
shown by Napoleon, even in war, but often in the less familiar sphere
of politics. It was a mistake to challenge England, the ruler of the
seas, and the treasurer of Europe, to prolong a contest in which, after
Trafalgar, she could not be invaded; and the Continental system was a
chimera of force more injurious to French than to British interests. It
was a mistake to reverse the policy of France for centuries, to abandon
Sweden, and to betray the Turks, especially when these had become her
allies; and it was idle to suppose that the fiat of a Czar would add to
the stability of the French Empire. It was a mistake, too, of the worst
kind to trample on the State and the people of Frederick; and it was an
insult to the Poles to put the nation off with the phantom of a Grand
Duchy of Warsaw. But the greatest mistake of all was to give a free
rein to the ambitious impulses of two despots; to place the Partition
of Europe at the will of two men essentially opposed in nature and
interests; to suppose that the rulers of France and Russia could ever
join in a lasting alliance. General war, the shifting of the boundaries
of States, the destruction for a time of the European system, and
implacable international passions and hate, were the inevitable
results of this scheme of rapine; and beside that it had no element of
strength and endurance, it was certain to lead to a rupture between its
authors. In this unnatural arrangement we see no trace of the genius of
Richelieu, of Cavour, of Bismarck; it was a mere ephemeral product of
force, in opposition to the nature of things, and simply impossible to
become permanent. This, however, was not perceived by the conqueror,
covered with the adulation of France and the Continent; and Napoleon
at this moment might, indeed, imagine that his power was beyond the
perils of Fortune.
A word on the state of Napoleon’s Empire, at this time at the height
of its greatness, though its borders were to be still extended. France
had long ago reached what the national instinct had pointed to as
her natural limits; she was bounded by the Rhine, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees; but girdled all round by dependent States, and supreme in
Italy and in fully half of Germany, she was really the mistress of
Continental Europe. Nor was this immense dominion the mere spoil of
conquest; the vigorous and able rule of Napoleon had done wonders
for old France, and had conferred the greatest benefits on her new
possessions; and the institutions he founded still flourish far beyond
the Rhine, and even along the Danube. The prosperity of the Empire
was growing and splendid; the continuance of order and the collapse
of anarchy had given free play to the energetic interests which the
Revolution had called into being; nay, the tributary States had, to
a great extent, been renovated by the hand of Napoleon. The creative
genius of the Emperor, too, had accomplished marvels in administration
and finance, and had completed fine monuments of material grandeur;
magnificent roads overcame the Alps, and connected the Atlantic with
the Mediterranean shores; and Paris, rich with treasures of art from
all lands, and crowded with new and imposing structures, put on the
aspect of Imperial Rome, and gathered into her lap the fairest spoils
of conquest. Military power, besides, invincible as yet, and the glory
of years of triumphs in war, protected this fabric of far-spread
dominion; the ruling race still prevailed in the Grand Army; its
commanders, lavishly rewarded, were docile instruments of a chief still
in the flower of his age; and the flaws and defects in it were not yet
conspicuous. Nevertheless, even now, one or two deep thinkers, amidst
the terror and submission of three-fourths of Europe, had declared
that the Empire could not be lasting. With its vassal Bonapartes, its
enormous extent, its sway over subdued but mighty races, its mediæval
pomp, its _parvenu noblesse_, its violence, and its despotism
of the sword, it was an anachronism in the nineteenth century; its
grandeur and even its beneficence could not hide its oppression; it
was established among a people prone to change, and demoralized by
Revolutionary passions; and, in antagonism to all moral and social
forces, it depended on a single life and a conqueror’s genius. Greater
as it was, too, than the monarchy of Louis XIV., it was shut out from
the sea by England, a source of weakness and peril to a maritime State;
and it had no foundations in the organic structure, the history, or the
traditions of the French people. Most ominous of all, the Empire seemed
to destroy intellect and public worth in France: it was barren of great
men of letters, and of great citizens; it produced only soldiers and a
servile herd of functionaries.
I pass over the immediate results of Tilsit, the oppression of every
small neutral Power, Copenhagen, the invasion of Finland, and the
dissensions which, following the friendship pledged on the Niemen, were
left unappeased by the meeting at Erfurt of the two potentates already
distrusting each other. Napoleon soon began to repent of the promises
he had made to Alexander respecting the Turks; but he continued to use
the Russian alliance, unstable as it was, for his grasping ambition.
The Czar, I have said, perhaps consented that his conqueror should
work his will on Spain; and before the Grand Army had nearly returned
to France, Napoleon had begun to make preparations to annex the whole
of the Iberian Peninsula. A quarrel was forced on Portugal, on the
pretence that she was evading the Continental system, and would not
exclude English trade from her ports; and Junot, Duke of Abrantes in
the Napoleonic peerage, was sent with an army of conscripts, at the
close of 1807, from the Pyreneean frontier, to occupy Lisbon. The
fate of Spain had been already settled; that Monarchy had, for many
years, been almost an abject vassal of France; it had given her ships,
soldiers, and a noble colony; and it had sacrificed a navy in her cause
at Trafalgar. But the fiat had gone forth that the House of Bonaparte
should replace the House of Bourbon on the throne of Charles V. Junot
was ordered to “observe” the Spanish fortresses; and large bodies
of French troops were gradually moved towards the borders of Spain,
from the Loire and the Garonne. I cannot dwell on the Machiavellian
statecraft which brought about the invasion that followed, on Aranjuez,
and the plot of Bayonne. The dotard Charles fell into the arms of the
tempter; the rights of Ferdinand his son were set aside with contempt,
and Joseph, a brother of Napoleon, put off the Crown of Naples to
assume that of Spain and the Indies.
The Emperor, however, might have recollected what the character is of
that strange people, which has more than once baffled the greatest
warriors, amidst the ranges of its hills and defiles, and has done
wonders in the defence of its cities. Spain sprang up to a man, from
the coasts of Galicia to Andalusia and the Pillars of Hercules; “Death
to the foreigner!” was the fierce national cry; local juntas were
formed in every province to direct and sustain the great movement;
levies were poured into the army by thousands; and a call to arms, like
that of France in 1793, led to an almost universal rising. Napoleon
ere long found that it was no easy task to pacify and subdue a country
like this; and his contemptuous scorn of popular passions--“the
stirrings of the _canaille_” was a common phrase of his--made
him neglect obvious precautions of war, and had soon involved his
arms in a signal disaster. When the insurrection broke out, in the
summer of 1808, he had about 120,000 men in Spain, along the main
roads between Bayonne and Burgos; and had he operated after his wonted
fashion, he could easily have conquered the northern provinces. But
in his disdain of “armed mobs,” he tried to overrun the whole country
at once; and, simply ignoring every rule of strategy, he divided his
armies into small fractions, and sent them, in flying columns, west,
east, and south. Thus employed, his forces could not perform their
task; Bessières, indeed, a marshal, the Duke of Istria, routed a
considerable army at Rio Seco; Moncey penetrated into the heart of
Valencia; and Dupont, a soldier of brilliant promise, marched into
Andalusia, sacked Cordova, and even approached Cadiz. The insurrection,
nevertheless, was everywhere; swarms of guerillas, gathering on all
points of vantage, and impossible to destroy, cut off the French by
hundreds; and Moncey and other generals found themselves checked by
armed multitudes, formidable behind ramparts. Ere long, terrible news
from the south arrived; Dupont was caught and surrounded by the chief
part of the regular army of the fallen Monarchy, in the recesses of
the Sierra Morena, and with his troops was compelled to lay down his
arms; and though possibly he might have done more than he did, he was
hemmed in by immensely superior numbers. Even worse intelligence came
from Portugal, and the French army at the mouth of the Tagus. I shall
afterwards review the career of Wellington; enough here to say that he
first set foot in Portugal in the early days of August 1808; and he
defeated Junot, who by this time, too, was isolated in the midst of a
national rising, with considerable loss to the French, at Vimeiro. The
beaten chief and his army were too glad to effect their escape from
a victorious foe, and an insurgent country, by accepting terms; and
they were ultimately embarked in British transports, and landed on the
western coast of France. By the autumn of 1808 the French armies in
Spain, humbled and baffled by a despised enemy, had evacuated almost
the whole Peninsula, and had fallen back behind the course of the Ebro.
The indignation and amazement of the Lord of the Continent at these
untoward events, may be easily conceived. The great master of war had
been found wanting; “a French general,” he exclaimed, “had justified
Mack”; and, worst of all, his trained and disciplined troops had failed
before rude and half-armed masses. He shut Dupont up in a State prison,
and kept him immured through the rest of his reign; and how bitterly
he felt the disgrace of his arms is seen in his admirable remarks,
made at St. Helena, on the ruinous effects of capitulations in the
field. The Emperor lost no time in endeavouring to repair the injured
renown of the French army--the Czar and his ministers had secretly
rejoiced--and, in November 1808, he left the capital and invaded Spain
with an enormous force, determined, he wrote, “to put down rebellion.”
He had five corps and the Guard in his hands; the weak Spanish armies,
indulging in foolish boasts, and spread upon an immense line, extending
from Biscay to the verge of Aragon, were pierced through and scattered
like sheep; and Espinosa and Tudela were two battles that were little
better than huge butcheries. Yet these “examples,” as they were called
by the Emperor, were not attended by decisive success. Napoleon’s
manœuvres were perfectly designed; but plunged in the depths of a
hostile country, and utterly unable to procure intelligence, Soult and
Ney failed to cut off the retreat of the Spaniards, and the wrecks
of their routed forces were soon restored by insurrectionary levies
flocking in by thousands. The way to the capital was, however, open;
Napoleon mastered the Somo Sierra by a magnificent charge of his Polish
horsemen, for he scorned to make a regular attack; and he entered
Madrid, in the last days of December, at the head of a force that
defied resistance. King Joseph was now installed on his throne; but
there was no popular voice to say “God bless him”; the city was one
of silence and mourning; and though a Constitution was announced for
Spain, which abolished all kinds of old abuses and inaugurated many
real reforms, the invaders remained as detested as ever. Against the
feeble protests of his crowned dependant, Napoleon continued to rule by
terror and force; when, as 1808 was closing, his attention was directed
to a new enemy.
After Vimeiro, the successful army, placed under the command of Sir
John Moore, had held Lisbon and been reinforced; and a fresh body of
troops, led by Sir David Baird, had landed at Corunna to assist the
Spaniards. Moore had marched northwards and joined Baird; and near
the close of December he had approached Valladolid, threatening the
communications of the French with Bayonne, and at the head of about
30,000 men. Napoleon had soon broken up from Madrid with an army
perhaps 40,000 strong; he crossed the Guadarramas by a forced march in
the hope of reaching and crushing his foe; and he directed Soult to
combine the movement so as to fall on the rear of the British force.
Moore, however, ably changing the line of his operations, made for
Corunna; the Emperor pressed his enemy in vain; and he abandoned the
pursuit in the first days of January, the attitude of Austria having
become menacing and requiring his immediate presence in France. It is
unnecessary to dwell on the events that followed; the British army
made good its retreat, though with heavy loss, through the mountainous
tracts that divide Leon from the Galician seaboard; and Soult proved
unable to to bring it to bay. Moore turned to fight at Corunna when
about to embark; he beat Soult off in a well contested action; and
though he fell, he knew that he had saved his army. He had shown great
ability in this brief campaign, remarkable for this too, that it was
one of the few occasions on which the Imperial Guard beheld British
troops, until ruin lowered on it on the field of Waterloo.